The Epic Voyage of Princess Meritaten Part 2
The Tara Prince’s Necklace
In Spring 1955, the Irish archaeologist Dr Sean O’Riordain of Trinity College, Dublin was undertaking an excavation at the prehistoric settlement at the Hill of Tara in County Meath, Ireland. As stated above, the Hill of Tara was considered to be the traditional seat of the high kings of Ireland from the arrival of the Goidelic Celts or Gaels at the beginning of the Iron Age around 700 BC. However, Dr O’Riordain made a truly startling discovery when he unearthed a much older, pre-Celtic burial cairn (tomb) called the Mound of Hostages. Removing the earth to the east of the mound, O’Riordain discovered a huge boulder which sealed a narrow stone passageway some 4 metres long that led into three separate chambers. From the many human remains and simple stone artefacts found inside the first two chambers such as tools, flint arrowheads and simple pottery, he deduced that the site was clearly a Neolithic, late Stone Age burial mound of the sort relatively common throughout Britain and Ireland from around 3,000 BC. However, the third chamber was a completely different story.
Surrounded by the cremated remains of a number of bodies, he discovered a pit containing an unburned, intact skeleton crouched in a foetal position. These remains were clearly later than those in the other two chambers, as they were accompanied by Bronze Age artefacts such as a dagger and pin. However, what Dr O’Riordain found around the neck of the skeleton was truly astonishing. It was an exquisite bronze necklace, consisting of an assortment of amber and jet droplets between each segment of which was a series of smaller turquoise coloured, conical beads known as faience beads. Such artefacts were relatively common in the more advanced civilisations of the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle and Near East, such as Egypt, Sumeria and Minoan Crete, whose technology was far beyond the Bronze Age peoples of Ireland at that time.
A forensic examination of the skeleton identified it as that of a teenage boy, which was carbon dated to around 1350 BC (the age of Akhenaten and Meritaten). Scientists at the Department of Archaeology’s research laboratory at the National Museum of Antiquities, Scotland then conducted a spectro-chemical analysis of the grave’s artefacts. Since the faience beads had such a unique chemical composition, it would be possible to determine where the raw materials for the necklace originated. After months of examination, the dating was confirmed. However, the conclusions drawn as reported in an article by J.F. Stone and L.C. Thomas in Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society in September 1956 were truly staggering, for they reported that the beads were of Egyptian origin. In fact, when they compared them with Egyptian faience beads, they were found not only to be of identical manufacture but also of matching design to the beads inlayed in the fabulous golden collar found around the neck of the famous Egyptian boy-king Tutankhamun, Meritaten’s brother, who was buried at around the same time as the Tara skeleton.
Unfortunately, the findings of the National Museum of Antiquities, Scotland so challenged the existing archaeological consensus concerning contemporary trade routes of the period that the academic community ignored the report to all intents and purposes. Even the few archaeologists who did comment shrugged off the find as a freak, isolated discovery. The question of whether the Tara Necklace was a one-off fluke or real evidence of a trading link might have been settled by further excavations around the Mound of Hostages but sadly Dr O’Riordain died within a few months of his discovery and no further excavations were undertaken. However, was the discovery of the Egyptian faience beads really a one-off find?
Lorraine Evans subsequently learned that a very similar necklace had been found as long ago as 1889 at a Bronze Age burial mound at North Molton in Devon, England and was now on display at the Exeter Museum. The necklace consists of jet, amber and faience beads almost identical to the one discovered at Tara and its also dates from around the same time. For Evans, the fact that two anomalous necklaces, both similar and contemporary, had been found around the necks of two clearly important individuals – perhaps tribal leaders or religious figures – at two completely different locations suggested more than mere coincidence was involved. However, long-distance trade in the Bronze Age required boats. Was there anything to prove that Egyptian boats could have conducted the long voyage to the British Isles in the 14th century BC? Well yes there was.
The Ferriby Boats
Lorraine Evans soon discovered that compelling evidence had come to light that indicated not only the possibility of trade routes between Egypt and the British Isles, but that in the 14th century BC a group of Egyptians had actually visited Britain. This remarkable discovery had been made as long ago as 1937 at North Ferriby in Yorkshire on the Humber Estuary, which is located on the north-east coast of England. It should be borne in mind here that the river Trent, also flows into the Humber Estuary and that when the Romans arrived here in 43 AD, this territory was controlled by the Celtic Brigantes tribe who took their name from the Romano-British goddess Brigantia, who can be linked to the Tuatha de Danann goddess Brigid in Ireland and Bride in Scotland. If Meritaten later became personified as Brigantia/Brigid, then if she did land by boat at some stage in Yorkshire close to the River Trent, this might make sense of the C’s statement: “A: Arcadia is a crossroads for the one Essene, the Aryan one of Trent.”
It all began with the discovery by two brothers of the preserved remains of an ancient boat, which was at first taken to be a Viking longship of the type that had frequently raided the east coast of England during the Dark Age. The pieces the brothers discovered did indeed turn out to be part of a boat built from massive planks of oak. The boat was a large vessel some 16 metres long and slightly over 3 metres wide at widest point. It seems paddles had propelled the boat as the remains of several were found, although a preserved sail for downwind travel was also found. There was room for nine oarsmen on each side.
Eventually, a full-scale excavation was carried out by a team of local archaeologists. As they dug around the boat, the remains of other similar boats were found with timbers that had been well preserved in the clay river bank. In the end three boats in various states of preservation were uncovered (two more would subsequently be uncovered at a later date). With each new piece of evidence, it soon became clear that a small flotilla of ships had long ago been wrecked in a storm in what had once been a natural harbour. Unfortunately, the excavation was abruptly curtailed due to the outbreak of the Second World War, which would see many of the finds being destroyed when the Museum of Hull was bombed.
With the war over, the eminent archaeologist C.W. Phillips, one of the country’s leading authorities on ancient maritime vessels having earlier excavated the famous Anglo-Saxon Sutton Hoo boat, got involved. When visiting the North Ferriby site in late August 1947 to inspect the two additional boats that had been uncovered, Phillips had been expecting to view the remains of two typical Viking longships and was amazed at what he saw. The boats were appreciably smaller than Viking boats and their basic construction was also very different. The Ferriby boats were of a far more primitive design and very much older than anyone had suspected being ancient vessels of a type previously only found in the Mediterranean. Just how they got there and where they came from was a complete mystery. Phillips academic standing and enthusiasm for the find would lead to a full-scale excavation of the Ferriby Boats involving senior researchers from the British Museum. The entire team would soon agree with Phillips’s initial dating of the boats to 1350 BC (MJF: which again you will note is the era of Akhenaten and Meritaten). Nothing like them had ever been found in Britain before.
The fairly new radiocarbon dating process allowed the British Museum Research Laboratory to date the Ferriby boats in 1958 to somewhere between 1400 - 1350 BC, thus confirming Phillips’s dating. However, Phillips’s findings were met with scepticism by many prominent establishment archaeologists who refused to accept the Ferriby boats could have been so old. They took the view that such long seafaring voyages outside the Mediterranean were completely beyond the capabilities of the contemporary civilisations of the Mediterranean and the Middle East. As a result, the majority of the archaeological community appears to have quickly forgotten the Ferriby boats. The Ferriby finds were thus stored away in the basement of the Hull Museum and the reports and photographs of the investigators were left to gather dust in the Museum’s archives. There they lay for years until by chance they were examined by eminent archaeologist Professor Sean MacGrail of Oxford University when he visited the Museum in 1989. He could not believe how such important discoveries could have been hidden away for so long. In a report he declared: “Indeed the Ferriby Boats are of world-wide importance, being surpassed in age only by the third millennium BC planked boats from the vicinity of the royal pyramids at Giza in Egypt.”
Lorraine Evans was intrigued that the Ferriby boats were dated to the very same period as the Tara and North Molton necklaces. She therefore wondered whether the boats could really have been Egyptian. As an Egyptologist, she believed that the Egyptians had been more capable seafarers than historians gave them credit for. However, the general consensus among her fellow Egyptologists was that they had not gone far to sea. For her this seemed a strange point of view since the Egyptians are credited with inventing the sail and they had the use of a huge harbour at Byblos on the Syrian coast dating from around 2500 BC, which they had captured in the reign of Pharaoh Khufu. Moreover, she was aware that there was a wealth of literature, dating back to the Middle Kingdom of the 17th century BC, which was solely devoted to tales of seafaring such as The Tale of Sinuhe. This ancient story told of an epic saga of sea voyages that ventured as far afield as the Black Sea and the coast of Spain.
She also looked at the specifications for the great buried boat at Giza referred to by Professor MacGrail, which had been carefully dismantled and perfectly preserved in the airtight chamber it was found in. It transpired that this vessel differed little from the Ferriby boats even though this vessel dated to more than a millennium before the Ferriby boats. This fact is known from various wall reliefs dating from the 14th century BC. Unlike the Romans and Greeks, the ancient Egyptians did not go in for refining and evolving their technology, preferring to stick with what they had if it did the job. When Evans saw photographs of the Ferriby boats and reconstruction drawings of them and compared them with detailed pictures of the Giza boat now preserved at the Giza Museum, she was immediately struck by the similarity in design. To all intents and purposes, the Ferriby craft were simply smaller-scale versions of the Giza vessel.
What Lorraine Evans wanted to know though was whether such vessels were capable of reaching the British Isles. For this she turned to Dr George Simkis of the Maritime Research Unit at the University of California, one of the world’s leading authorities on ancient ship design. From his point of view, there was no reason why such craft could not have made it to the British Isles provided they went in summertime and did not encounter bad weather. Indeed, he felt that many of the Greek and Roman vessels that later visited Britain were far less seaworthy than the Egyptian boats. For Evans, the question was not whether the Egyptian boats could have done it, but had they? Could the Ferriby boats have been Egyptian vessels that had made such a voyage only to be wrecked within touching distance of the British mainland?
Before taking her investigations any further she decided that it was imperative to visit Hull Museum and inspect the Ferriby boats herself. However, having written to the museum seeking permission to view them, she became increasingly frustrated by the museum’s evasiveness and layers of red tape. She began to recognise that the unreasonably conservative attitudes of the archaeological establishment of the 1950’s still prevailed where the Ferriby boats were concerned with a cloak of secrecy surrounding their remains. The museum almost seemed embarrassed by them and preferred to leave the matter alone. Consequently, she decided to turn her attention to the historical record to see whether there was any evidence for ancient Egyptian vessels visiting Britain in antiquity. Here her research would pay dividends.
The Mystery of Scota
She appreciated that unlike the ancient Egyptians, who had a wealth of written records, the people of the Bronze Age British Isles in 1350 BC had no form of writing. As a result, she went to the British Library to look up the oldest histories of Scotland. She eventually discovered the Scotichronicon – ‘The Chronicles of Scotland’ compiled in Latin in the mid-15th century AD by Abbot Walter Bower of Inchcolm Abbey, a small Augustinian monastery located on a remote island off the north-east coast of Scotland [MJF: So yet again we encounter the Augustinians reminding me of what the C’s once said to Laura – “A: And who was Saint Augustine/San Augustin... Augustus, Augustine Monks, etc?”].
Reading a recent translation of the work made by Professor Donald Watt of the University of St Andrew’s, Evans casually browsing through the first volume, entitled ‘The Origins’, which dealt with the first settlers in Scotland, found Bower speaking of an ancient time, well before the Roman arrival in southern Britain (43 AD), when the north had been visited by the ancient Egyptians. In fact, he claimed that they were led by no less a person than an Egyptian princess - a pharaoh’s daughter called Scota. Quoting Bower:
“
In ancient times Scota, the daughter of pharaoh, left Egypt with her husband Gaythelos by name and a large following. For they had heard of disasters which were going to come upon Egypt, and so through the instructions of the gods* they fled from certain plagues that were to come. They took to the sea, entrusting themselves to the guidance of the gods. After sailing in this way for many days over the sea with troubled minds, they were finally glad to put their boats in at a certain shore because of bad weather.”
*We should particularly note here the reference to (oracular) instructions from the gods, suggesting perhaps 4th or 6th density assistance. In this regard, we should also note that the C’s admitted to having been in direct contact with Abaraham/Moses:
Q: (L) Where did Moses get his knowledge?
A: Us. Q: (L) Okay, you told us before that he saw or interacted with a holographic projection created by the Lizard Beings. Was that the experience on Mount Sinai?
A: Yes.
Q: (L) Okay, well, if he got knowledge from you, did he get this prior to the interactions with the Lizard beings?
A: Yes. He was corrupted by imagery.
Given that Abraham/Moses was being misled by the Lizards, could the C’s have helped Meritaten by making her wise to what was happening and aiding her in her flight from the Middle East?
This shore, Bower explained, was somewhere in the north of Britain. He went on to relate how a considerable number of Egyptians accompanied Scota, so many in fact that they came in a large fleet. They eventually settled in what is now Scotland and, for a while, lived peacefully with the natives (the Picts). Ultimately, relations deteriorated, and the newcomers were forced to leave, setting sail again to land finally in Ireland [MJF: which you will note is the same final destination as the Tuatha de Danann]. Here they merged with the local population to form a tribe known as the Scotti, named after their founding princess. The Scotti grew in number and power until they dominated much of Ireland, and, for a while, their kings became the high kings of the entire country. Many centuries later, after warring with other Gaelic tribes, they returned to Scotland, defeated the Picts and conquered the Highlands as a whole. Indeed, the very name Scotland, Bower claimed, derived from these people.
Evans could not believe her luck for here she had a medieval account of a voyage implying that ancient Egyptians had visited northern Britain and Ireland in antiquity. She wondered whether the Ferriby boats had been part of Scota’s fleet, perhaps sunk when it was forced to hold up ‘on a certain shore because of bad weather.’ Ferriby was after all in the north of Britain. In her excitement, she began to wonder whether the Tara Necklace had been a gift to a local chieftain when the Egyptians had first arrived in Ireland or whether the Tara Prince may even have been an Egyptian himself. She decided to do a reality check and weigh the evidence first.
Scota was certainly not an Egyptian name. Although the people of Ireland had been called the Scotti in Roman times, they were not named after an Egyptian princess since the word derived from a Latin word meaning “raiders” because of the daring raids they had launched across the Irish Sea when plundering Romano-British settlements. However, Bower’s account of the Irish invasion of Scotland did fit within the framework of known historical events. By the 8th century AD, the Irish (Scotti) had conquered the Picts and taken control of most of what is now Highland Scotland, with those Irish tribes now ruling the Highlands becoming the great clans of Scotland who would be distinguished by their different clan tartans or plaid. However, the peoples of the south of Britain, now calling themselves the English, still referred to them by their Latin name, the Scotti or the Scots.
Lorraine Evans next turned to Ireland’s literary heritage to see if she could find corroboration of the Scota story. She started by consulting the earliest surviving manuscripts to contain remnants of the old Irish literature, which had by and large been lost due to the nation’s turbulent history. She found that Scota was mentioned in passing in the Lebor Gabala – The Taking of Ireland - where it referred to her as the daughter of an Egyptian pharaoh landing with her fleet on the shores of Ireland. She also found that it was not only in Ireland that the story of Scota existed before Bower’s time for around 1050 AD Reimann, the Abbot of Metz in Moselle, France wrote a biography of the 10th century Scottish Saint Cadroe. He began the biography with a brief history of Scotland where he explained that the Scots claimed descent from ‘a certain Scota, the daughter of a pharaoh of Egypt’. The fact that these fleeting references to Scota were in literary works that dated back to the 12th century and the 11th century respectively showed that Bower had not just made the story up. Evans also learned that Bower had taken his account from a Welsh source, that of the 9th century Welsh monk and historian Nennius’s Historia Brittonum thought to have been compiled around 830 AD. This showed that the legend of Scota existed well before the Middle Ages and had been spread widely throughout the British Isles. Nennius drew on various old surviving documentary sources for his history and it would seem that he took the story of Scota from the Roman writer and historian Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea’s World Chronicle compiled in 320 AD, which sadly is no longer extant. It seems Eusebius’s source for the story was the Greek historian Euhemerus who visited Egypt and compiled a definitive history of the country around 300 BC. If Bower’s story of Scota had originated in Egypt, it seems to have been long forgotten since Evans, as an Egyptologist, had never come across an account of it. She therefore decided to attempt to identify the mysterious princess.
If Scota had existed, her true name would have been preserved in the records since she was after all a royal princess. It helped here that Bower had actually named the pharaoh in question as Achencres, although this was not an Egyptian name. Evans was able to discover the identity of Achencres through the works of the Egyptian priest and historian Manetho, a contemporary of Euhemerus, who identified him as the pharaoh Akhenaten. She immediately recognised that he was the pharaoh who had reigned at the same time as the Tara Necklace and the Ferriby boats. But assuming Scota was a daughter of Akhenaten, why would she risk her life on a one-way perilous voyage to the British Isles through uncharted waters? It surely could not be for trade purposes in view of the prosperous commercial trade networks already existing throughout the Mediterranean. Evans thought the answer might lie in Bowers’ statement that: “they had heard of disasters which were going to come upon Egypt, and so through the instructions of the gods they fled from certain plagues that were to come.”
Evans appreciated that Akhenaten had reigned at one of the most turbulent times in Egyptian history. During his reign, trade had all but trickled to a halt, the empire disintegrated, and the Egyptians abandoned the worship of the supreme god Amun. The abandonment of Amun was a move brought around by Akhenaten himself when he suddenly, and for no apparent reason, decreed that a new god, a minor solar deity called the Aten, should replace the Egyptian chief god Amun. He outlawed the powerful Amun priesthood, desecrated their temples and seized their great wealth to build a new religious centre to the Aten at Amarna in Middle Egypt. Although things seemed to start well for Akhenaten at the beginning of his reign, they would appear to have gone decidedly wrong by the end of his reign, which, as the C’s have confirmed (see above), ended with him being deliberately drowned in the river Nile by persons unknown. Egypt seems to have been in the grip of a crisis and Akhenaten (who had abandoned the old of gods of Egypt) as Pharaoh was held to blame along with the Aten. It was the Pharoah’s duty, as a semi-divine being, to provide Ma’at or balance to the kingdom and evidently Akhenaten had failed to do this and paid the price.
Lorraine Evans does not attribute this crisis, as authors such as Graham Phillips have, to the cataclysmic events triggered by the eruption of the massive volcano on the island of Thera (today called Santorini) which lay in the Aegean Sea – which is known to have been one of the greatest volcanic eruptions in recorded history. Moreover, she does not make the connection between this eruption and the biblical plagues of Egypt, which brought around the Hebrew or Israelite Exodus, as recounted in the Bible. As a result, she does not link Akhenaten with the pharaoh of the Exodus as the C’s have done, nor does she appreciate that Akhenaten’s wife and queen, Nefertiti (Meritaten’s mother), would desert him to become the wife of the biblical patriarch Abraham who the C’s have confirmed was also the same person as Moses who led the children of Israel out of Egypt and into the wilderness of the Sinai Desert. If she did know and appreciate these things, she would realise that there would have been every reason for Princess Meritaten to flee Egypt in fear for her life. Nor does she appreciate that Meritaten was also the biblical figure of Hagar the Egyptian who was the maid servant of Sarah and the concubine of Abraham, producing a son for him called Ishmael in the Bible, both mother and son later being abandoned by Abraham in the Desert of Paran. Nevertheless, Lorraine Evans does make out a very good case for Meritaten having been the Princess Scota and she also provides a very interesting scenario for how Meritaten escaped Egypt by boat to land eventually in the British Isles. It is these two things I will now concentrate on.
Why is Scota Meritaten?
Akhenaten and Nefertiti had six daughters any one of which could have been Scota. So why does Lorraine Evans think Scota should be Meritaten, their eldest daughter? A relief or wall decoration in the private chambers of the royal palace at Amarna dating from the eighth year of Akhenaten’s reign shows the king and queen seated on stools with their six daughters before them, the youngest being a mere babe on her mother’s lap. The six princesses were, in descending order of age: Meritaten, Meketaten, Ankhesenpaaten, Neferneferuaten-ta-sherit, Neferneferure and Sotepenre. From later wall paintings, it is clear that two of these princesses were dead by the 14th year of Akhenaten’s reign, both seemingly dying whilst in childbirth. The dead princesses would appear to have been Meketaten and Neferneferure. Two other daughters would appear to have died from a plague that decimated the capital towards the end of Akhenaten’s reign. This is the plague that was referred to in the transcripts:
Q: The story about the plague that is told in Manetho, was this a plague as in leprosy, a disease, or something else?
A: It was multiple elements including leprosy.
The first signs of a plague came in diplomatic correspondence that originated from the Phoenician coast around Year 12 of Akhenaten’s reign, which had seen Amarna host an international pageant in which the nations of the Egyptian Empire gathered to convey tribute to Egypt. This glittering and joyous occasion would be the last time a united and happy royal family would be seen in public. The pestilence seemed to break out first in Sumer, which was the Egyptian headquarters for the region, and then in Byblos that terrified not only the inhabitants of the city but also the Egyptian officials stationed there as well. The Amarna letters reveal that the king of Cyprus warned Akhenaten that Nergal, the god of pestilence, was abroad and rife in the land, which saw a large reduction in the production of copper ingots for the pharaoh. Hittite records also show that around this time a devastating plague was raging in the Levant. It would appear to have decimated the entire Hittite royal family including the king Suppilupilimas and his son and heir Arnuwanda II. It seems that during border skirmishes with Egyptian troops, the plague quickly took hold among the Hittite army and then swept through their empire.
Further proof of this terrible plague was provided by the Ipuwer Papyrus - called the Admonitions of a Sage. Moreover, a series of inscribed clay tablets, despatches to Akhenaten from foreign dignitaries in the East, found in the ruins of Amarna in the 19th century, actually make reference to an unspecified plague which swept the entire Egyptian Empire. After the 15th year of Akhenaten’s reign, a great many members of the Egyptian nobility disappeared from the record, including the Queen Mother Tiye. A fragment of an Amarna letter entitled ‘The Betrothal of a Princess’ implies that Queen Tiye did indeed die from the plague:
“
And you [Akhenaten]
yourself sent Haamasis your messenger and Mihumi, the interpreter, saying … ‘the wife of my father was mourned … that women … she died in a plague.”
As Neferneferuaten-ta-sherit and Sotepenre are amongst those who are absent from all royal scenes after this time, it seems that they too died in this epidemic. Interestingly, Evans thought the plague had also accounted for Queen Nefertiti because she too disappeared from the record about this time. However, the real reason for Nefertiti’s disappearance might come as a great surprise to Evans since, from what the C’s have said, plague was certainly not the reason for her disappearance:
Q: (L) Did Helen/Nefertiti/Sarah get some sort of sickness that contributed to the necessity of locking her up?
A: No, in fact it was the fact that she did not get sick that made her the object of suspicion.
Helle and Hel
The mention of leprosy as one element of this plague may make for an interesting connection to the character called Helle who appears in the Greek mythic story of Helle and Phrixus (they were twins with a mother called Nephele - which sounds suspiciously like "Nephilim"), who escaped on a flying golden ram, sent by their mother, from their evil stepmother Ino who planned to have them sacrificed. During their flight Helle, for unknown reasons, fell off the ram and drowned in the strait between Europe and Asia, which was named after her as the Hellespont, meaning the sea of Helle (now the Dardanelles [MJF: or was it really the English Channel?]); Phrixus survived all the way to Colchis, where King Aeëtes, the son of the sun god Helios, took him in and treated him kindly. Phrixus sacrificed the ram to the god Poseidon and gave the king the Golden Fleece [MJF: a cypher for the Grail] of the ram, which Aeëtes, the father of the witch Medea, hung in a tree in the holy grove of Ares in his kingdom, guarded by a dragon that never slept. This episode would form a prelude to the Jason and the Argonauts story, which in reality is a Grail quest tale. However, the C’s would make a connection between the character of Helle (whose name is similar to Helen of ‘Helen of Troy’ fame, who Laura and the C’s identified with Nefertiti/Sarah) and Meritaten/Hagar/Kore:
Q: (Galahad) Is the importance of Argos related to the myth of Jason and the Argonauts?
A: Yup.
Q: (Galahad) Does it have something to do with the individuals who flew away on the Ram?
A: Mmmmm .... And did she really drown?
Q: (Galahad) Is it a significant fact that this girl's name was similar to Helen of Troy?
A: Could be a clue. All those stories of escape from confinement and flying and cataclysm...? Who was imprisoned? Why? Good night.
Q: (Galahad) Stories of escape - there's the story of Daedalus and Icarus... We have Colchis, Jason, the Argonauts. We have the last living member of the Perseid family... all mixed up with Abraham and Sarah otherwise known as Paris and Helen who was also Nefertiti. (L) And Abraham wanted to save this individual from the fury of Helen. (S) And why was Helen furious? What happened when Helen got furious? (Galahad) A thousand ships got launched... (L) And a lot of people died and have been dying ever since from this whole monotheistic rant. And it looks like Helen/Nefertiti/Sarah is the main source of the whole deal. A Hittite hybrid with a big skull like those heads of the Ica in Peru [
MJF: Keep this point in mind when we look at the Paracas skulls later in this article].
And the C's have said that there were hybrids in Peru that were supposed to have been attempts to create a 3rd density body for direct STS incarnation. And it looks like Sarah/Helen/Nefertiti was one of them. No wonder women have been given a bad name. We have our work cut out for us.
Well, a thousand ships may have been launched but they may have been Egyptian ships escaping a plague-ridden Egypt. However, the character of Helle also shares a similarity to the Norse goddess
Hel or Hella. Thisplacerocks mentioned to me in response to one of my earlier articles that ‘
Nephele’ sounds like Nephilim and the Cs spelt it as "Nephelim". Coincidence? I think not and believe that he was really on to something here.
In Old Norse literature, the word “
Aesir” is commonly used to refer to the gods of the Norse peoples. Most of the best-known Norse gods and goddesses belong to the Aesir, including
Odin,
Thor,
Frigg,
Tyr,
Loki,
Baldur,
Heimdall,
Idun, and
Bragi. Their home is
Asgard, one of the
Nine Worlds, which is located in the highest, sunniest branches of the world-tree
Yggdrasi. The Icelandic historian, poet, and politician
Snorri Sturluson (1179 –1241) obviously noticed the similarities between the Greek gods and heroes in Homer’s tales and felt compelled to give a rational account of the Æsir in the prologue of his saga, the
Prose Edda (see: ahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edda). He speculated that
Odin and his peers were originally refugees from Troy as the Greeks, Romans, Goths, British and others claimed also. In other words,
the stories of the Norse gods were basically just the Nordic version of the Odyssey.
Hel ("
the Hidden" from the word
hel, "to conceal") is the Norse Goddess of the dead, ruler of the Land of Mist,
Niflheim or
Niflhel located in the far north - a cold, damp place that is home to frost giants and dwarves. The name Hel was applied both to the Queen of the Underworld and the land itself, and it is thought that the land gave the Queen her name. In the late Christianised form of the myth, when Hel became Hell, she was said to be the daughter of
Loki, who was equated with Lucifer.
So, the Norse goddess Hel (similar etymologically to “Helle”) is a goddess of the dead and ruler of Niflheim, a place located in the far north that is home to giants – the Nephilim of the Bible perhaps - and dwarves or fairy people (elves) who may in reality represent today’s Grey aliens. The name represents both the land itself and the Queen – which may provide a link to
Nephele, Helle’s mother, who as a cloud nymph can be likened to a cloud.
In appearance she is said to be a fearsome sight: She is described as being piebald, with a face half-human and half blank (see above), or more usually, half alive and half dead. It is told that when she was born, disease first came into the world. She was said to sweep through towns and cities bringing plague: if she used a rake, some would survive; if a broom, none would.
It is therefore interesting here that Hel is linked with plague, since, as I mentioned above, the land of Egypt was stricken by plague at the time Nefertiti and her daughter Meritaten abandoned Egypt with Abraham/Moses. If the Norse character of Hel is connected to the Greek mythic character of Helle and therefore to Hagar/Kore/Brigid, could she and her party have brought the plague with them and this fact was remembered in Norse folklore?
Meritaten’s Strange Disappearance
Akhenaten’s third eldest daughter, Ankhesenpaaten, survived the plague but she is accounted for in Egypt well after this time since she married her brother Tutankhamun and became Queen of Egypt. Ankhesenpaaten would later go on to marry the Pharaoh Aye, Tutankhamun’s successor, and died in Egypt a few years afterwards. So, the only daughter of Akhenaten unaccounted for is Meritaten.
After the disappearance of Nefertiti (Evans thinks she died but we know from the C’s that she had been locked away), Meritaten would be mentioned in despatches sent to Akhenaten by various correspondents. One of these was Burnaburiash II, king of Babylon, who called her by the affectionate name of Mayati and referred to her as ‘the mistress of your house’, implying that, as the eldest surviving daughter, she had assumed the duties of her mother. However, Evans notes that Meritaten seems to have disappeared around the time of her father’s death. Perhaps this is not so surprising when you consider that her father was murdered by drowning in the Nile. Who could have been behind this act of murder. One could point the finger at agents of the deposed Amun priesthood, but they had no presence of any kind in Amarna, since Thebes was their stronghold. If not the Amun priesthood, who else would have had the requisite power base and opportunity to depose the pharaoh? The answer seems to be the army. As Lorraine Evans points out, a central feature of Akhenaten’s government at Amarna is that his immediate entourage was drawn directly from the military whose senior officers enjoyed a particularly high station. Scenes of soldiers and military activity flourish in the art of Amarna. A strong military commander who appeared in the later years of Akhenaten’s reign was Horemheb who would become ‘General of the Army’ in the reign of Tutankhamun as well as his regent. He would assume the throne after the boy king’s death and the short reign of his elderly successor Aye. Evans points out that one thing is clear, there was no love lost between Horemheb and Akhenaten. An inscription on a statue of Horemheb and his wife Mutnodjemet reads:
“
All the plans for the Two Lands cams from his hands. Everyone agrees with what he said when he was summoned by the king. Now the palace fell into rage, and he answers back at the king.”
This inscription is unique since never on any other occasion in Egyptian history is the temper of the king mentioned or even alluded to. What may have caused the row? Could it suggest the general was forced to leave the palace at Amarna because of some major problem or issue? Was this the reason why Horemheb seemed to so hate the royal family? There is little question that he did for on his own accession to the throne, he set about erasing all trace not only of Akhenaten’s reign but also of every other Amarna king (Smenkhare, Tutankhamun and Aye). He immediately outlawed the use of their names. He attacked everything and anything connected with the Amarna kings including their worship of the Aten, destroying their temples, toppling their statues, defacing their reliefs and chiselling out their inscriptions. He even ordered the systematic destruction of Akhenaten’s beloved city of Amarna. Amarna quickly became a ghost town, the citizens moving en masse back to Thebes. Horemheb would also restore the old gods of Egypt and with it the primacy of the Amun priesthood.
Meritaten was closely associated with her father’s promotion of the solar deity Aten and by doing so would no doubt have attracted to herself the enmity of the powerful Amun priesthood, whose services had been made redundant when her father introduced the worship of the Aten as the official state religion of Egypt. Although Evans does not mention it, Meritaten had assumed the rulership of Egypt with her husband Smenkhare – Egyptologists are undecided as to whether he reigned as a co-regent with Akhenaten or reigned for a short while in his own right, perhaps three years, with Meritaten as his queen [MJF: another potential reason why Nefertiti/Sarah may have grown angry with her daughter since she had seen her assume her role as Queen of Egypt whilst she was locked away. She even came to be designated as the king’s Chief Wife a title that had belonged to her mother]. Graham Phillips claims that Smenkhare and Meritaten preserved the official worship of the Aten and may have attacked the temples of Amun to enforce this policy. Smenkhare evidently succumbed to plague and died alone after returning to Thebes, the old capital before Akhenaten moved it to Armana. Before his death, it seems he sought to be reconciled to the Amun priesthood. Whatever the case may have been, the resurgence of the Amun priesthood and the rise to power of Horemheb after the death (murder) of Akhenaten would have given Meritaten good reason to flee Egypt, as she no doubt would have been high on Horemheb’s hit list. As Lorraine Evans suggests, by the time Horemheb ascended the throne at Thebes, he may have had the blood of the entire Amarna dynasty on his hands.
Lorraine Evans also astutely points out that as Akhenaten’s eldest surviving daughter, she should by tradition have been married to his successor the boy king Tutankhamun, her brother, but that honour went to her younger sister Ankhesenpaaten. One must assume she did not marry Tutankhamun because she was no longer around to do so. Evans further points out that there is no record of Meritaten’s death and her tomb has so far never been found. What became of her is a complete mystery. As all the other daughters of Akhenaten are accounted for, if Scota was a daughter of Akhenaten, as Bower and his sources maintain, she has to have been Meritaten. This would lead Evans to search next for direct evidence of a voyage by a fleet of boats fleeing Egypt.
Meritaten’s Flight from Egypt
Lorraine Evans presents a very good case for how Meritaten may have escaped Egypt and the Middle East. However, she does not take into account that she may have fled Egypt in the company of her mother Nefertiti, becoming in the process the biblical figure of Hagar the Egyptian maid servant to Sarah and the concubine of Abraham/Moses. We must ask, however, whether she went willingly or was she coerced given what the C’s said about her:
Q: (L) Going back to this person - the last living member of the Perseid family - who was handed over by Abraham in his Jacob persona to someone else, who was this person handed over to and why?
A: For protection from the fury of "Helen."
Q: (L) So, there is a reflection of that in the story of Hagar the Egyptian. Who was she handed over to?
A: The "Dragon Slayers."
[…]
Q: (Galahad) Does it have something to do with the individuals who flew away on the Ram?
A: Mmmmm .... And did she really drown?
Q: (Galahad) Is it a significant fact that this girl's name was similar to Helen of Troy?
A: Could be a clue. All those stories of escape from confinement and flying and cataclysm...? Who was imprisoned? Why? Good night.
We know that Nefertiti was confined to her quarters for nearly five years according to the C’s until Abraham/Moses rescued her:
Q: (L) Well, it seems that Nefertiti disappeared from history in the 12th year of the reign of Akhenaten. He then died in the 17th year of his reign. If Nefertiti was Sarah, where was she during this five year period, if Akhenaten died going after her when Abraham/Moses carried her off?
A: Locked up.
Q: (L) So, Nefertiti is Sarah and Abraham came and rescued her somehow, is that correct?
A: Yes.
However, did he also rescue Meritaten/Hagar at the same time, or did she go involuntarily? There clearly was some tension existing between Nefertiti and Meritaten, which eventually led to Meritaten/Hagar and her son Ishmael being forced to leave the Israelite group that was led by Abraham/Moses:
Q: (L) Who was Hagar the Egyptian?
A: Princess of Egypt.
Q: (L) Was she Sarah's maid?
A: No.
Q: (L) Was she Sarah's daughter?
A: Right nurture to.
Q: (L) What do you mean? I don't understand.
A: Sara's daughter by Akhenaten.
Q: (L) Did Abraham have a child by Hagar also, his wife's daughter by another man?
A: Yes.
Q: (L) Well, that's pretty incestuous. Did Sarah actually get so jealous of her own daughter's child that she demanded that Abraham abandon her?
A: Close.
By their response “close”, the C’s seem to be suggesting that Neferititi’s jealousy was not the whole story here. Lorraine Evans reckons that Meritaten would have been about 18 years of age when she disappeared from Egyptian history. As her eldest child, this would make Nefertiti perhaps in her late thirties at the time. Not old by any means. The biblical cover story that Nefertiti/Sarah was old and struggling to produce a son for Abraham as the reason for why she gave Hagar over to him so that he might sire a child by her, seems somewhat suspect when one looks at the facts
*. We cannot rule out the old stepfather falls in love with his young stepdaughter scenario, which would certainly explain Nefertiti’s hostility to her daughter and explain her jealousy. As they say: “
Hell have no fury like a woman scorned”. Throw in the fact that Meritaten seems to have assumed Nefertiti’s exalted position at the Egyptian court (she had been placed on an equal footing with her husband Akhenaten – an unheard-of situation in Egyptian history, especially when you take into account that she was foreign born) whilst Nefertiti was incarcerated, gives Nefertiti even more reason to resent her daughter. It is even possible that Akhenaten may have married Meritaten (the Egyptian royal family was extremely incestuous, particularly during the 18th dynasty, since they were obsessed with preserving what they considered to be the special royal bloodline) since she took over Nefertiti’s title of ‘Great Royal Wife’. However, could just as well have inherited that title by becoming the wife and queen of the mysterious Pharoah Smenkhare. There is even a theory that Meritaten may have served as pharaoh in her own right under the name Ankhkheperure
Neferneferuaten, a theory I would admit that I don’t subscribe to.
*Curiously, Rabbinical commentators have asserted that Hagar was Pharaoh’s daughter. The midrash Genesis Rabbah states it was when Sarah was in Pharaoh's harem that he gave her his daughter Hagar as servant, saying: "It is better that my daughter should be a servant in the house of such a woman than mistress in another house." Sarah, as Nefertiti, was in fact part of a harem, for it was common for Egyptian pharaohs to have several wives. However, to me it is strange that rabbinical interpretations of the Torah, which date back to 300-500 AD, should maintain a traditional belief that Hagar was the daughter of a Pharaoh, since this is exactly what the C’s have confirmed.
The Battle of Gibeah and the Revolt of Korah
The Bible also provides stories which seem to indicate there was dissension and factions within the Israelite camp from the beginning. One such story is the episode of the rape of the Levite's concubine, also known as the
Benjamite War. The tale concerns a Levite from Ephraim and his concubine, who travel through the Benjamite city of
Gibeah and are assailed by a mob, who wish to gang-rape the Levite. He turns his concubine over to the crowd, and they rape her until she collapses and later dies from her ill treatment. Rabbinical interpretations say that the woman was both fearful and angry with her husband and left because he was selfish, putting his comfort before his wife and their relationship. This incident would lead to a civil war between the other tribes of Israel and the Benjamites, which almost saw the Benjamtites wiped out at the
battle of Gibeah. Although this story in the Book of Judges is supposedly set centuries after the age of Moses, one can see that it might contain echoes of a much earlier incident and possible conflict, one involving the Levite Abraham, his concubine Hagar (Meritaten) and Abraham’s wife Sarah (Nefertiti), which would lead to a battle and a parting of the ways between Meritaten, her mother and her lover Abraham, when Meritaten was handed over to the custody of the Tuatha de Danann or the ‘Dragon Slayers’ (known in the Bible as the Tribe of Dan and to the Greeks as the Danaans). Curiously, Judges 19 concludes by saying that nothing like this had happened since the Exodus of the Israelites from Ancient Egypt. Is that because the story had its roots in the Exodus.
A second biblical story which may reflect this conflict between the Meritaten faction, and the Nefertiti faction can be found in the story of
Korah. In this case, the tale is set during the Exodus and involves a man called Korah leading a revolt against Moses. Korah, a Levite and cousin of Moses, would die along with all his co-conspirators, when God caused "
the earth to open her mouth and swallow him and all that appertained to them” (
Numbers 16:1–40). I find it interesting that this man’s name should be Korah, which sounds suspiciously similar to Kore, a name the C’s connected with Hagar. Indeed, some older English translations, as well as the
Douay–Rheims Bible, spell the name as
Core, and many Eastern European translations have "Korak" or "Korey". Is this just coincidence? The rabbis of the Talmudic era explained the name "Korah" as meaning "baldness". It was supposedly given to Korah on account of the gap or blank which he made in Israel by his revolt. However, if Korah was really Meritaten/Hagar/Kore, then the bust of her found in a workshop at Amarna and now on display in the Berlin Museum (see below), which shows her as being bald, may give the true reason why Korah was known by that name in the Bible. In an earlier article, I suggested that this depiction of her as bald may be due to her having been a priest in the Temple of Aten. Thus, I was intrigued to find Lorraine Evans lending support to this argument. She stated that initially the shaved head was just a fashion suited to the hot climate of Egypt, aiding cleanliness and the wearing of courtly wigs. However, at least from the Middle Kingdom onwards, it was also associated with the purification rights prescribed for those persons performing a range of priestly tasks. This led Evans to wonder whether the royal sculptor, Thutmose (who was appointed as a vizier by Akhenaten), in displaying Meritiaten with a bald head was trying to emphasise Meritaten in a religious context at Amarna. It is worth stressing here that during Akhenaten's reign, Meritaten was the most frequently depicted and mentioned of Akhenaten’s six daughters, signifying her high standing. Her figure appears on paintings in temples, tombs, and private chapels. Not only is she shown among images depicting the family life of the pharaoh, which were typical of the Amarna Period, but on those depicting official ceremonies, as well.
Korah is also represented in the Bible as the possessor of extraordinary wealth, having discovered one of the treasures that Joseph had hidden in Egypt. Now we know from the C’s that Joseph was not a real patriarch but a composite figure mainly based on the legendary
King Scorpion of Egypt:
Q: Well, that's bizarre. Was King Scorpion of Egypt the "Joseph" of the Bible?
A: Mainly.
Q: Does that mean that Joseph was a composite story?
A: Yes.
Q: Was King Scorpion a son of Sargon the Great?
A: Close.
Q: Was he, as the Joseph story tells, kidnapped and sold into Egypt?
A: No.
Q: Was he sent to Egypt to have a hand in the unification of Egypt and the control system there?
A: Close.
We should not forget here that according to the C’s Sargon the Great was, like Nefertiti a millennium later, a “deep level punctuator” hailing from the subterranean civilisation that calls itself the ‘Nation of the Third Eye’. We may reasonably assume that these people were sent up to the surface world to pursue an agenda connected to the Nation of the Third Eye, just as their modern counterparts and agents are doing right now. Hence, if King Scorpion was connected in some way to Sargon, he too may have been following such an agenda.
If Korah was the possessor of some great treasure that he/she brought out of Egypt with him/her, then it would not have been found by Joseph but by someone else. Could this treasure have been the Grail, which had been possessed by Akhenaten (a member of the Perseid family descended from the mythic Perseus who killed the Gorgon Medusa and cut of her head – which is a cypher for the Grail) along with the Ark of the Covenant that was handed over to Abraham/Moses in his Jacob persona by Nefertiti/Sarah in her biblical guise as Rachel? Could Meritaten have been angered by the way in which the Grail and the Ark of the Covenant – her father’s former possessions - were being used by Abraham/Moses? Could this have become a major bone of contention between them?
Although the Bible story has Sarah (Nefertiti) demanding that Abraham abandon Hagar (Meritaten) and her son Ishmael in the desert, could the story of Korah hint that the issue may have been the reverse scenario? According to the Rabbis, the main cause of Korah's revolt was the nomination of Elizaphan, son of Uzziel, as prince over the Kohathites (a clan of the Levites). Korah arguing thus: "Kohath had four sons. The two sons of Amram, Kohath's eldest son, took for themselves the kingdom and the priesthood. Now, as I am the son of Kohath's second son, I should be made prince over the Kohathites.” However, Moses gave that office to Elizaphan, the son of Kohath's youngest son". Korah then supposedly consulted his wife, who encouraged him in the revolt, saying: "See what Moses has done. He has proclaimed himself king; he has made his brother high priest, and his brother's sons priests; moreover, he has made you shave all your hair in order to disfigure you.” In the Bible, Moses made his fellow Levites the priests of the Israelites. If Hagar/Meritaten had been a priest in the temple of the Aten, might she have expected her son Ishmael, who was of Egyptian royal blood, to have been made a priest too? You will note that Moses gave the office of prince of the Kohathites to the son of Kohath's youngest son. Could this be an echo of Isaac being preferred over Ishmael who was Abraham’s first-born son by Hagar? We also see a reference to Korah having all his hair shaved off, which may be an echo of the bald appearance of Meritaten. Moreover, we see Korah’s wife claiming that Moses has proclaimed himself king, suggesting he had become something of a tyrant. Interestingly, more modern, liberal Jewish commentators take the view that Korah incited all the people against Moses by arguing that it was impossible to endure the laws Moses had instituted. This argument accords with the C’s comments that Moses was eventually deposed because he had become a tyrant:
Q: (L) Why was Moses not allowed into the promised land?
A: Because he became tyrannical.
Had Meritaten/Hagar been one of the first to notice this in her biblical persona as Korah? In the Bible, Korah and his allies were punished for their rebellion when God caused the ground to split open beneath their feet swallowing them, their families, and anyone associated with Korah together with all their possessions. Moreover, the Bible provides that those Israelites who did not like what had happened to Korah, his associates and their families and objected to Moses were subsequently punished by God through a plague. This is an interesting point since it may suggest that the plague, which was epidemic in the Near and Middle East and had wiped out much of the Egyptian royal family (see above), may also have affected the Israelites.
Even though the Bible provides that Korah is destroyed by God, if Korah was really Meritaten/Hagar/Kore then she evidently survived. In the Biblical tale of Hagar, she and her son are rescued by the intervention of an angel of God who opened Hagar's eyes upon which she saw that she was near a well of water. Christian commentators, including St. Paul, have put their own interpretations on this story.
Another such commentator was St Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430 AD) who was a theologian and philosopher from Roman North Africa. He referred to Hagar as symbolising an "earthly city", or sinful condition of humanity: "In the earthly city (symbolised by Hagar) [...] we find two things, its own obvious presence and the symbolic presence of the heavenly city. New citizens are begotten to the earthly city by nature vitiated by sin but to the heavenly city by grace freeing nature from sin." Given this interpretation, it is perhaps unsurprising that the C’s, who seemed to be sympathetic towards Akhenaten and by extension his daughter Meritaten, should have launched a scathing criticism of St Augustine when they said:
Q: Okay. I think that helps. We will take care of it and see where it goes. Now, I was trying to relate the Canaries to Roswell, and noted the funny numbers of lines of latitude. I really didn't WANT to read any more about this subject, but I dug out all the stuff sent to me by Stan Friedman. And, while I was reading, I was looking at the map and locating the various sites mentioned by him. It seems that the actual 'crash' did not take place AT Roswell. It was nearer to Corona. And, near Corona is a place called 'Socorro,' and there is a Socorro on the Canaries*, also, which is almost exactly where this statue of the Virgin was found. C**** and I looked it up and it means 'succour.' The inscription on the painting of the Magdalene that is in the church at Rennes le Chateau talks about the 'tears of the virgin' washing away sin and is a plea for 'succour.' And this painting is modelled on the painting of St. Anthony, the hermit, who is shown being tempted by creatures that can only be described as 'aliens.' Now, there is also a Magdalena, a St. Anthony, and even a Pearce on the map near this crash site. And when I drew little lines connecting them all, they enclosed this plain of San Augustin....
A: And who was Saint Augustine/San Augustin... Augustus, Augustine Monks, etc?
Q: Oh! Well, I never thought about that! I was going after St. Anthony and the Magdalene... St. Augustine was one of the early church 'fathers' who wrote a lot of things that became established church doctrine in general.
A: Or established early church "whitewash".
*The reference to the Canaries and the part they may have played in the Meritaten story will be dealt with later in this article.
Was this what the C’s had in mind here? In fairness to St Augustine, he like other Christian scholars had inherited the Old Testament, which had been written by Jewish scribes and rabbis who collected tales and stories together that had been handed down from generation to generation by word of mouth. Although many of these stories, such as Hagar the Egyptian, had a kernel of truth to them whilst others were merely allegorical, the real history behind them had become muddled and distorted by the time the Old Testament was compiled. Hence, when Christian scholars like St Paul and St Augustine tried to interpret them centuries later, it is not surprising that they often struggled to make sense of them, which sometimes led to them imposing false notions or interpretations on real characters such as Hagar. For the Jews, Egypt was always a land of depravity, idolatry and sin and it would have been natural, therefore, to connect Hagar as an Egyptian with such things.
The biblical story of Hagar’s rescue is certainly a wonderful prosaic tale describing how Hagar and Ishmael were rescued through angelic intervention. However, the C’s seem to hint that Hagar’s delivery may have been effected by other means. The Greek myth of
Helle and Phrixus, which tells of twin siblings escaping by means of a flying golden ram might suggest a more nuts and bolts mode of delivery from danger, perhaps by what today we would call a flying saucer or similar such craft. But the C’s also said Kore was handed over to the Dragon Slayers who I am proposing were the Tuatha de Danann of Irish folklore. I would certainly not rule out a more technological rescue mission since the Nation of the Third Eye (Meritaten’s mother’s people) would seem to have access to exotic technology like the Grey Aliens and Lizards do and we know from the C’s that the Greys have intervened to rescue people, e.g., the Kantekkians from Kantek and some Native American Indian tribes who were rescued from Siberia and taken to North America. Indeed, according to the
Lebor Gabála Érenn, the Tuatha de Danann reputedly came to Ireland "
in dark clouds" and "
landed on the mountains of [the] Conmaicne Rein in Connachta". Many modern UFO accounts tell of flying saucers disguising themselves within dark clouds, perhaps a biproduct of the ionisation process that surrounds these craft. Although I would not dismiss the part advanced technology may have played in Meritaten/Hagar/Helle’s escape from her mother’s wrath, I will henceforth rely on Lorraine Evans’s account of how she thinks Princess Meritaten escaped from a plague-ridden Middle East, an escape which involved the use of sailing craft like those found at North Ferriby.
Continued in Part 3